With the advent of the Internet in 1991 there has been an explosion of available pornography websites making it available to anyone at any time. Up until 1990 there were fewer than 90 different adult magazines published in America. Six years later there were about 900 pornography websites. Today there are 2.5 million adult websites! And with that astronomical number there are tens of millions, perhaps 100s of millions of people visiting those sites daily. With all of this traffic on web it should give us pause question the conventional wisdom that says pornography is harmful.
Despite what moralists might say, from a psychological perspective, there is no evidence to indicate that there is anything inherently harmful to the viewer who watches pornography. Both men and women enjoy pornography, though men are more interested in visual pornography and women are more intrigued by written material.
The problem with pornography is not that pornography itself is harmful, but rather (a) it has been made illicit which, in turn results in people feeling guilty and (b) that some people tend to use pornography exclusively in lieu of having sexual relationships with real people. In fact, they prefer pornography to sexual intimacy. Others use porn in the same way that compulsive over eaters abuse food. It is not the food that is the problem, but how people use it. Food becomes a substitute for human connections, a substitute for other forms of stress release and anxiety reduction.
That being said, there is some pornography that is simply bad porn just as there is bad food. Some food can make one ill because it is spoiled or toxic. Similarly, there is some porn that is not sexual in nature but is sadistic promoting violence against others or promotes pedophilia. However, erotica has been around for thousands of years. It part of human history. The reaction to it varies from culture to culture and era to era. The more sexually repressive a society is, the more repressive the attitudes about porn. And the more a culture makes viewing pornography an illicit activity, the more it will be sought.
In short, pornography itself is not harmful, but our attitudes about it, how we use it, and the guilt surrounding can be harmful to our psychological development.
[Dr. Dreyfus is a nationally recognized clinical psychologist, relationship counselor, sex therapist, and life coach in the Santa Monica - Los Angeles area treating low sexual desire, premature ejaculation, sexual addictions, drug and alcohol abuse as well marriage and relationship communication and intimacy issues. The profits from his latest book, LIVING LIFE FROM THE INSIDE OUT along with his other five books, are being donated to charity through the website Book Royalties for Charity and can be purchased through Amazon.com. Please become a fan on his Facebook Fan Page by indicating "like" on the page by clicking here. You can also find more tools to help you experience a more fulfilling life by clicking here to visit his website.]
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